


keep the bad things from you

by gay_writes_with_mac



Category: Peach Plum Pear (2011)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Trauma, hank and sharon are wholesome, it's in the canon don't @ me, it's not bad but it is there, that's a whole ass bi woman right there, the ending was shit so i fixed it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25617202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gay_writes_with_mac/pseuds/gay_writes_with_mac
Summary: Fix-it fic for the movie, because we all know Dora deserved better.
Relationships: Dora Bell Hutchinson/Original Female Character





	keep the bad things from you

The night she spends on Sharon’s couch is the longest of her life.

As long as she waits, there is nothing. No banging. No shattering glass. No slurred shouts for her to come out from wherever she’s hiding. Only the buzzing of mosquitoes and the singing of the crickets and the nightingales’ quiet chorus in the trees, and the slow, comforting creaking of Hank’s wooden rocking chair as he sits peacefully on the front porch. 

The soft groaning of the old chair is what finally lulls her off to sleep, nestled up in shockingly fluffy blankets and an old hand-stitched quilt that smells like cheap fabric softener and years and years of good use. Dora silently wonders how many strays just like her have been tucked under this quilt by Sharon’s wrinkled, loving hands, and then she wonders no more as she slips away into a beautifully dreamless sleep.

The smell of bacon and eggs sizzling in a hot pan is what wakes her up, and she wraps the quilt around herself like a shroud, not wanting to leave its delicious warmth behind, and stumbles into the kitchen. She half - more than half, a full three-quarters - expects to see Will in one chair, shoveling Sharon’s delicious cooking into his mouth like he’d been half-starved, and Jesse in the other, picking at a strip of bacon, the corner of his mouth twitching up at the sight of her all bundled up. 

But three-quarters of her thought it, and three-quarters of Dora is briefly sadly and then not-so-sadly mistaken, because she misses them, both of them, but especially Jesse, and it hurts, but at the same time his kiss burned worse than her cigarettes, and he needed her to look after him, and just for a few days, she’d like to be the one being looked after. 

That doesn’t make the missing or the hurting any easier, though.

Sharon stuffs her with eggs and bacon, lamenting her slender frame and insisting that she needs to eat more before she wastes away to nothing, and then Dora finds herself on her bike with a backpack slung over her shoulders, pedaling down the road to the school.

Her grades are dismal, the teacher informs her, with a ruler-straight smile that shows little teeth and less love. She’s never been bothered enough to care. But Sharon and Hank care twice as much as they should, and some of all that caring is bubbling over the edge like a pot boiling over and Dora must be soaking up the leftovers, because something about that mean smile from those snakey little lips, thinner than a paper envelope, snaps something deep inside her like a glow stick and suddenly she thinks that maybe she can try a little bit.

And it turns out that Dora is maybe just a little bit smart. Not Einstein or anything, not Tesla, not Hawking, but a little bit of smart and a little bit of Hank pushing his glasses up on his nose and looking over her homework through his squint and a whole lot of working harder than she ever has in her life and suddenly Dora is graduating high school with a GPA that makes Sharon cry with pride and even gruff old Hank ruffle her hair and tell her it’s nothing to sneeze at.

But this town is too small, and Dora is too big for this tiny, tiny place. She misses Jesse. She misses something she’s never known to miss, his wide, wide world filled with opportunities that passed her by one by one like geese in formation, soaring far too high above her head. 

She doesn’t want to leave them. Hank and Sharon never had a child but Dora knows that they’ve quietly always wanted one and she’s as close as they’ll ever get. But she’s never, not once in her life, had a chance to be even a little bit selfish. She always had to think of someone else. Think of her father, think of Tommy, think of her mother even though her mother isn’t around to think anything of her in return, think of Jesse. So for once, she’s going to think of herself.

Dora doesn’t know the first thing about applying to so much as a gas station, much less a college, and Hank and Sharon can’t help her there. So first thing in the morning on Saturday she packs up her birth certificate and her last report card and her high school diploma and her driver’s license and anything else that she thinks might matter and bikes her way down to the library.

The librarian is an elderly woman with steely grey hair and watery blue eyes who’s shorter than Dora by two inches and speaks in a quavery voice and looks shocked enough to keel over from a heart attack then and there when Dora asks for help. But to be a librarian you’re supposed to have a master’s degree, and even this old woman does, and she pulls up something on one of the dusty, heavy library computers and helps Dora fill out each and every field.

She comes back and checks the email the librarian helped her set up every single day. And there’s nothing and there’s nothing and there’s nothing and there’s nothing and there’s nothing and there’s nothing and there’s nothing. Dora resigns herself to staying in this little block of civilization out in the desert forever. Hank ruffles her hair and tells her not to give up. And there’s nothing and there’s nothing and there’s nothing and there’s nothing and there’s nothing and there’s nothing and there’s nothing.

And there’s something. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln wants Dora to come, and they want her to stay, and they want her badly enough that all she needs to do is pay for her dorm room and that’s all and she’s really going to go away and get a college education. The first in her family, her old and her new.

Dora puts those newfound applying skills to use and starts running a register at the one and only gas station in town. And when that’s not enough, she starts mowing lawns and walking dogs too, working all summer from dawn till dusk and coming home to a house full of encouragement and good cooking and then falling onto the comfy couch covered in quilts to sleep a few hours before starting all over again.

And she makes it. Somehow she makes it, just enough to pay for the dorm. Dora doesn’t see her father much around town these days, and she hasn’t touched a little pill in a few months now, and she has seven thousand dollars, just enough to pay for her room and board at college, and a few hundred left over for books and clothes and a few things for her room.

She says goodbye to Sharon back at the house. Sharon cups her face in her warm, callused, weathered hands and just looks at her, looks at her for a long moment, like she’s memorizing every detail of her face. And then she kisses her forehead quickly and sends her away with a wave of her hand, telling her to “go on now. Get going, honey, before you’re late” in a thick voice that makes a lump form in Dora’s throat and suddenly she might cry.

She doesn’t, though. She waves at Sharon and climbs into the passenger seat of Hank’s rumbling truck with her single bag in her lap and watches the town she’s spent every second of her life in disappear behind her in a thick cloud of billowing dust. 

Everything gets greener, slowly but surely, and then after a few hours of driving, they’re on the campus and Dora, who was almost dozing, is suddenly wide awake, looking around at the beautiful buildings and the massive flowing fountain and the crowds of happy, laughing, talking people, and trying to wrap her head around the fact that she lives _here_ now. Lives in this Eden in the middle of a place she thought was only desert.

Hank helps her carry her one single bag into her dorm and doesn’t stay long. “Work hard,” he tells her, gruffly, and then he ruffles her hair and he’s gone. She gets the sense that he doesn’t know what else he should do. What’s the role of an almost-dad in taking a girl to college?

Dora expects to weep into her pillow that night. She even attempts to for a few minutes, mostly out of the odd obligation that she should be sad and homesick and distraught. But she’s just not. She misses Hank and Sharon. But they wanted this for her. And everything else in that old and crumbling town is just painful and scary and reminds her of the mark on her cheek that has yet to fully fade and year after year of rough purple bruises flowering on her thighs. 

And then the next day her roommate arrives, and Dora meets Stella for the first time.

Stella has a tattoo of a butterfly on her wrist that she did herself with a sewing needle and a bit of ink. Stella has long chocolate brown hair that forms loose curls all of its own accord and flows all the way down to the bottom of her ribs like a rich brown waterfall. Stella has rich brown eyes that sparkle in the right light and make Dora’s stomach churn funny every time she looks into them. Stella brings with her a massive shelf of books and tells Dora to read them whenever she likes. Stella’s name means _star,_ but to Dora she shines far brighter than any of her namesakes in the inky blue night sky.

Stella isn’t like anyone she’s ever known. Stella makes her feel things she’s never felt before. And when Dora wakes up on her second night with her pillow damp with tears, covered in sweat and struggling to breathe and letting out high-pitched, gasping little cries, Stella crawls into bed with her despite how Dora is the farthest thing from loveable in that moment and takes her hand.

Stella’s hand is soft and warm. The little butterfly on her wrist is so blue it’s almost black. Dora holds her hand and sniffles and looks up at the ceiling and tries to memorize every detail, every wrinkle and crease and nail, of Stella’s perfect hand.

It’s not a surprise when Stella kisses her. Dora knows well enough what it looks like when someone wants to be with her. The surprise is that her stomach gives a funny little flip and her heart seems to take flight and flutter away as Stella kisses her with lips that taste like cherry chapstick, and for once, Dora doesn’t want it to stop.

She doesn’t want Stella to stop. She wants Stella’s hand in hers and Stella’s lips on hers and Stella’s body by hers forever and ever. Stella tells her she loves her and she means it.

She’s the first person to ever tell her that, or at least as far back as she can remember. Maybe her mother said it sometime. Dora doesn’t care to think much about her mother. But her father never did, and Tommy neither, and even Sharon and Hank seemed to think that was overstepping their boundaries as her not-quite parents. But Stella tells her. Stella rolls over and wakes her up with a kiss and an “I love you” every morning and sometimes it’s all Dora can do not to sob when she hears it because of how much it means to her.

Dora is with Stella, and Stella is home, and that makes Dora as close to something like home as she’s ever been. She’ll take what she can get. It’s more than she ever thought she would.

  
  
  



End file.
